News, Commentary and Insights from the Flash Player and AIR Product and Engineering Teams

Archive for October, 2010

Now that Adobe MAX is officially in full-swing, I thought I would summarize some of the key announcements that are most relevant for developers building AIR apps.

Adobe AIR 2.5

For a detailed look into what’s new in AIR 2.5, please see our What’s new in Adobe AIR 2.5 article that covers the new capabilities available in the desktop, mobile and television profiles. This is a major release for developers looking to build multiscreen applications. To see an example of just how easy it is to build an Android application, please watch Lee Brimelow’s recording Publishing AIR for Android Applications where he demonstrates how to build and deploy an application to the Android market in under six minutes!

There are a number of new capabilities in AIR 2.5 desktop including support for web fonts. Thank you to our friends at TypeKit for working with us to provide support for web fonts in AIR 2.5 desktop. Please be sure to check out the blog post on the TypeKit team blog for details. In addition, Mihai Corlan, a platform evangelist at Adobe, wrote an excellent article titled Using web fonts with Adobe AIR 2.5 that explores how to take advantage of web font support to build a basic news reader desktop application using HTML and JavaScript.

Adobe announced the preview release of Flash Builder "Burrito" which includes support for developing mobile and multi-screen applications and accelerated coding for Flex and ActionScript projects. For additional information, please be sure to see product manager Andrew Shorten’s blog post What’s new in Flash Builder "Burrito".

A preview release of Flex SDK "Hero" is now available providing support for building multi-screen applications using new mobile components. For additional information, explore the article Mobile development using Adobe Flex SDK "Hero" and Flash Builder "Burrito" by Narciso Jaramillo. In addition, Deepa Subramaniam wrote a detailed article on many of the new non-mobile capabilities of the Flex SDK "Hero" release.

As part of the keynote, Adobe TV Kevin Lynch introduced Project Molehill, a set of new 3D APIs coming to Flash player and Adobe AIR. For additional information, please watch the amazing video below and also visit Adobe Labs page describing the project.

Sneak peak at upcoming 3D support coming to Flash Player and Adobe AIR.

Adobe is pleased to announce at the Adobe MAX 2010 conference the availability of Adobe AIR 2.5 for televisions, tablets, smartphones and desktop operating systems. Adobe AIR 2.5 now supports:

Smartphones and tablets based on BlackBerry® Tablet OS, Android™ and iOS

Desktops running on Windows®, Macintosh and Linux® operating systems

Televisions with Samsung as the first television manufacturer to ship Adobe AIR in its line of Samsung SmartTV devices

Also device manufactures Acer, HTC, Motorola, RIM, Samsung and others are expected to ship the AIR runtime pre-installed on a variety of devices including tablets and smartphones later this year and early 2011. A list of mobile devices that meet the AIR system requirements can be found on Adobe.com.

Now with the Flash Platform, developers can use their existing web skills and reuse common code across devices and platforms to develop applications, content and video for the web on both personal computers and mobile devices or build standalone applications that run outside the browser on a wide range of devices, including TVs.

In just two short weeks after the AIR runtime was released on the Android Market, hundreds of AIR apps are already available in the Android Market for smartphones and tablets with AIR currently ranked 4.5 out of 5 stars on the Android Market. In addition, AIR apps are also available in Apple’s App Store. You can visit AppBrain for a list of AIR apps for Android currently available on the Android Market. This is what a few of our customers had to say about AIR 2.5:

Associated Press: “The Associated Press is very pleased using Adobe AIR to make some of our features covering the upcoming midterm elections available on the iPhone and Android devices.”

– Brian R. Scanlon, Director, Election Services, The Associated Press

Emantras: The ROI and resource savings to create applications with Adobe AIR and the Flash Platform is truly game changing. It is the only solution available that allows you to reuse code to target smartphones, tablets, desktops, and TV’s. The ability to deliver elearning content on multiple devices makes learning accessible to just about everyone.

– Sesh Kumar, CEO, Emantras Inc.

South Park Digital Studios: “With Adobe AIR 2.5, we were able to leverage existing code to quickly launch a new version of our popular South Park Avatar Creator across multiple platforms, letting our fans create their own South Park alter ego on the web or their Android smartphones and tablets.”

-Greg Kampanis, Senior Vice President of Content Strategy and Operations, South Park Studios

MixMatchMusic: With Adobe AIR we use the same code for desktops, tablets and smart phones, which saves us time, money and provides efficiencies of deployment. Then, we can quickly and efficiently distribute these apps through Adobe’s application distribution service, Adobe InMarket.

– Charles Feinn, CEO and co-founder of MixMatchMusic, developer of the MobBase mobile app service

You can learn more about all the new features for television, mobile and desktop devices in the article “What’s new in AIR 2.5” written by the AIR product management team and if you can’t join us at MAX you can attend MAX virtually by watching the keynote speech live. Here is the schedule of the MAX live broadcasts:

Finally, Adobe also announced two additional pieces of AIR related news. First, an update to the open source Flex framework and a preview release of Flash Builder that will enable developers to now build applications for mobile devices as well as desktops and TVs. Also, Adobe InMarket™, a new service that allows developers to easily distribute and sell their applications on app stores across different device types on app stores from Acer, Intel, and others is now available.

Stay tuned this week for more exciting information from the MAX conference and new about AIR.

With Adobe MAX just days away, I wanted to highlight several sessions that developers targeting Adobe AIR should not miss! Note that these sessions will be recorded, but if you are attending MAX, please be sure to sign-up while there is still room available. All of these speakers are subject matter experts on the topics they will be covering and this is a very unique opportunity to learn from the experts.

For AIR developers, it will soon be possible to extend the reach of your applications from smart phones and desktop computers to the living room. If you are innterested in learning more about the emerging TV application market, you will not want to miss the following two sessions presented by our colleagues at Samsung.

Distributing and monetizing your AIR applications to millions of Samsung Smart TVs and Internet connected devices is easy with the Samsung SDK. Explore the Samsung SDK, the Samsung Apps, integration with Adobe AIR 2.5 and the app submittal process. Also learn about valuable resources such as test centers which are available to help ensure your success.

Samsung is freeing the TV, with its Samsung Apps line of televisions and Blu-ray players, which can download, install, and run apps. Samsung Apps is built into all Samsung 2010 Blu-ray players, Blu-ray Home Theaters, and most TVs 40’’ and larger. Now distributing content to the $150 billion TV market is as easy as creating an app! And, Samsung is offering $500,000 in cash and prizes for the best looking, most brilliantly conceived, and most functional apps. At this session you’ll learn more about this app contest, the new market for TV applications, and what makes a great TV app.

Don Woodward (Adobe) and Aditya Bansod (Adobe) presented an excellent sneak peak today covering the upcoming Adobe AIR for TV sessions at MAX. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, please be sure to watch the recording of their talk.

To learn more about AIR for TV, please register for the following sessions at Adobe MAX (now less than one week away):

Based on popular demand, I am very pleased to announce that a second version of this talk will place on Wednesday, October, 27th, from 8:00A.M. – 9:00A.M. If you or members of your company are building mobile applications for Android and/or iOS devices, you will not want to miss Christian’s session!

Mike Jackson announced on the Adobe Government Bits blog that Adobe recently won top honors in a competition related to the V.A. Blue Button solution for health records. For additional information on how Adobe AIR was used to create a real-time interface for this solution, please be sure to check out Mike’s blog post.

Congratulations to the team that developed this gorgeously designed application!

We have posted an update to the Packager for iPhone that makes it easier for you to build AIR apps for iOS and submit them to the App Store. Update 2.0.1.12640 addresses issues when submitting AIR applications for iOS to Apple’s App Store that resulted from changes to Apple’s application submissions tools. You can download the latest standalone Packager for iPhone from Adobe Labs. or get the Flash Professional CS5 Update for iOS from the Flash Support Center.

With the recent release of Adobe AIR for Android and upcoming preparations for our Adobe MAX conference, there is significant amount of AIR-related news to monitor including new tutorials, featured applications and development libraries. Although our team is active on Twitter and Facebook, we plan on posting news roundups on the Adobe AIR team blog in coming weeks to help the community learn about the latest news.

News Roundup: 10/12/2010

The Adobe ActionScript 3 SDK for the Facebook Platform provides an ideal solution for building rich, social experiences on the web. Recently this library was updated to include new capabilities and bug fixes. Using this open source library, developers can quickly build Flash and AIR apps across devices and screens. Alan Greenblatt, a Flex partner solution architect at Adobe, recorded a video tutorial demonstrating how to take advantage of this library.

Ryan Stewart recorded a session on Adobe TV titled "Debug Adobe AIR for Android Applications." For developers looking to understand the basic developer workflow for troubleshooting issues in their apps using Flash Builder, Ryan’s recording provides a valuable overview.

The Land of Me is a collection of playful learning activities that adults and children can enjoy together. The application, developed by a very talented team at Made in Me, allows adventurers aged 2 years old and above to explore a colorful, enchanting world with heartwarming characters. The first chapter is available free and additional chapters are available for purchase. The application recently caught the eye of the BBC News Channel. Congratulations to the team at Made in Me for building such an inspiring application!

At Mobile World Congress 2010 Adobe announced Adobe AIR would support mobile devices by the end of this year. Adobe AIR, a key component of the Adobe Flash® Platform, enables developers to use a single development platform and reuse existing code to quickly build applications that run outside the browser, across multiple screens, devices and platforms. Because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes (AIR and Flash Player), it also gives developers a way to more rapidly target other mobile and desktop environments.

Today we reach another important milestone by posting the Adobe AIR runtime to the Android Market thus enabling our developers to distribute their applications to Android smartphone and tablets. Some of these apps are already available as AIR applications running on the desktop and iOS. We are also on track to deliver the next version of the AIR SDK by the end of 2010. Additional information regarding Adobe AIR for Android is available at Adobe Labs.

With the support of our Open Screen Project ™ partners, soon Adobe Flash Platform tools will allow for AIR apps to be compiled and delivered to Android, iOS, BlackBerry™ Tablet OS devices and more. Come see us at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles on October 23-27 for first access to industry leading tools that enable the development of applications across multiple screens, devices and platforms.

Android Device Requirements for Adobe AIR

Google Android 2.2 Operating system

ARMv7-A Processor

OpenGL ES2.0

H.264 & AAC H/W Decoders

256 MB of RAM

Downloading Adobe AIR for your Android device.

You only need to download Adobe AIR once from the Android Market and it will work with any AIR based application on your device. If you download an AIR application to your Android device and AIR is not already installed, the application will take you directly to download the AIR runtime. In the future, AIR will be preinstalled on many newer smartphones and tablets therefore eliminating the need for the initial download.